A story with potential, but it goes after easy targets : Adrian

Its title aside, there's nothing terribly wrong with Chris Adrian's story in the current New Yorker, "The Warm Fuzzies," yet there's nothing especially right with it, either. It's a story that suffers from its low ambitions - going after a pathetically easy target and, unsurprisingly, hitting the mark. Could anything be easier and more obvious than satirizing the phoniness of a large New Age Christian family where the parents "home school" the kids and the dad gives up his profession (dentist) to right Christian-allegorical songs that the family records and performs. Not that there isn't potential material here, there obviously is, but Adrian doesn't really mine it, just glances off the surface. He focuses on one of the daughters, Molly, who's apparently the most rebellious of the group, just mouthing the words and going along as a secret voice talks to her and utters the obscenities she would like to speak but (rarely) can. There's potentially great conflict! But the actual plot line of this story concerns an adopted (black) boy that they bring into the family/singing group, one of a series of adoptees that never seem to work out, and after some mild flirtation between him and Molly he exposes himself to her and he's banished. More allegory maybe, but more to the point it shows the hypocrisy of the family, treating these adopted kids as disposables, get a new one if the first doesn't meet your specs. So - the story has a lot in it, and unlike 95% of recent New Yorker stories it really is a short story - but it's disappointing because Adrian seems to shy away from the darker implications of his material. He's one of the 20 under 40, however, who shows both ambition and potential, and I will read more of his work.